Friday, May 09, 2008

We’re always looking for better flight-planning tools, and we’ve been searching for the best “Who Flies Where” website. Although we frequently use ITA Software, its matrix results are sometimes too detailed, especially when we haven’t even begun price shopping.

The UK site jetnav.co.uk seems to offer a good Who Flies Where tool. In our rather limited tests, it shows more airlines than ITA does (ITA doesn’t show Southwest or easyJet, for example). Another thing we like about jetnav is that although you have to plug in dates, the results show what days a flight operates.

Since jetnav doesn’t list prices, the results are displayed by flight times (great for planning), and the endless combinations in ITA are simplified or eliminated. For example, jetnav showed all airlines offering Spokane, Washington (GEG) to Durango, Colorado (DRO) and showed “20 outward flights and 15 return flights,” while ITA had a staggering 500 combinations for the same city pair. ITA too often shows “United [or whatever] and other airlines” without showing what those other airlines are. jetnav’s results show both airlines of a combination. When we’re just trying to find what airlines fly from A to B, jetnav offers simpler results.

jetnav does seem slow for some of its searches from little airport to little airport, and for flights of more than one stop. And on an intentionally obscure search (FIH to BKK – Kinshasa, Congo, to Bangkok, Thailand) jetnav only showed one flight on Ethiopian Airlines, while ITA showed one-stops on Air France, South African, and Thai. Conversely, on a Stansted, London (STA) to Prague (PRG) routing, ITA showed a ridiculous one-stop on “Delta” which turned out to be an American flight from London to New York, and then a Delta flight from New York back to Prague. We’re glad that jetnav didn’t bother to show that one, yet did show all other airlines on that route.

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